As I continue to live my present life, I find myself increasingly haunted by the past and how it affects my present, along with my present and how it affects my future. What I know and what I feel are two very separate things. What I feel seems real but is ultimately fake and what I know seems fake but is ultimately real. It remains such a confusing and overwhelming state of mind.
I have always been a nostalgic person, spending most of my time reminiscing about previous experiences. In the past few years I’ve managed to manage my nostalgia to the point of reason where I have reduced its power to control my present decisions. Despite this sense of control, I’ve found lately, given my abundance of solitude, that the past has again become more invasive.
I am reminded of experiences I once shared with those close to me that seem to presently have no meaning. It raises the question of whether these experiences even had meaning to begin with. Was any sense of value derived from what I recall? Was it simply my own perception of events at hand, unshared by other persons present at the time? Or was it mutually memorable?
I feel as if everything I had ever believed in or anything that ever gained my faith ended up abandoning me in the end. I compare then and now and it seems like infinite worlds apart. I realize the importance of change and progress yet can anyone sympathize with the person who has not been blessed with such a gift? More and more I see life change. My friends have moved away, gotten married or moved on. Family is still apparent but has become a rarity. Such is life and I’m not complaining, I’m simply stating. Work has grown mundane, unsatisfying, unfulfilling and has an aura of just general lacking. Any present meaning in life seems unattainable. Many people take solace in their work life, family life, romantic life or friendship life yet I cannot seem to derive meaning in any of them.
How does one grow up or move forward when it is difficult to see what is worth progressing towards? When everything you thought had meaning fails you, where else can you turn? The relationships I once shared have grown to be outdated, irrelevant or unwanted. Is the solution to simply create new relationships? To have new experiences? What then of the past and its relevance if you abandon it entirely for the sake of your future? Do your experiences become void? Is past emotion simply rendered as a liability and then forcibly forgotten or pushed aside? Is there a future worth holding onto at the cost of giving up present circumstances? When you trek this path alone, uncertainty is everywhere. It is companionship and the value of friendship that make any journey worthwhile. Surely these social aspects of humanity are indeed the most fulfilling. Yet as such, what does it mean to be alive in this world if it seems you are simply doomed to wander the earth alone?
It is the company of good friends and adventure that remain close to my heart. I maintain my uncertainty but I must hope that if the present is a result of the past that has changed, then I too will be given something new and fresh to believe in. An idea that I can stand by. A sense of belonging both nostalgic and foreign to me. The things of old have failed me. Alas, I hold onto them with great desperation but they shoo me away. I must seek out the new. It is the only way to avoid the loneliness and cold isolation perceptive nostalgia brings.